offline files and vpn

[boguhn]

I have the 'My Documents' folder on my Windows XP Service Pack 2 laptop

redirected to a network folder. The folder is set up for offline use.


When I am in the office, I am able to use the 'My Documents' folder, as

well as access the server it is on, without issue. However, when I
leave the office I start to have issues. They are as follows:


- I sync the folder and it tells me that everything is synced.
However, when I am offline, things that should be available to me are
not there.
- When I boot up the system offline, logon, and then run a VPN client
(Cisco VPN software) to connect to my company, I make a successful VPN
connection but cannot sync my files; no matter what I do, I am always
told that the 'My Documents' folder and the server it resides on are
offline. I have full access to all other systems I would want to get
to when connected via VPN except for this one server.
- When connected via VPN and told that I am 'offline', I can browse to
the server in question, and then only see a limited number of folders
than what I should be seeing. In the process of doing this, I will be
prompted by Windows for a username and password. When I put my
username and password in, they are not accepted.
- I know this configuration and what I am attempting to do should work,

as I used it successfully up until about 4 months ago when I rebuilt my

laptop from scratch. Ever since rebuilding the system, I have not been

able to work offline and then sync via VPN.
- When in my office, I have turned off offline access, removed my
system from the domain, synced the domain, then added my system back in

and turned offline files back on again. I cleared out all existing
offline files in the process of doing this and then did a resync. This

did not solve the problem.


Any thoughts to solve this would be appreciated.

 

[Guest]

I am surprised you have not had an answer to your question. I think your
problem is in a way similar to mine however, I do not use the VPN. I have a
user who has directed "My Documents" folder to a network share (this is
actually a GPO pushed by our Small Business Server 2003), it appears to
successfully synchronize when he logs off or manually initiates a sync.
However, when offline some of the files are not visible and some cannot be
opened or written to. He receives and error that the file is read only.
OS is XP Pro.

I noticed after doing some reading that the files are stored in a hidden
directory “CSC†in the Windows directory. It also appears that the files are
hashed and cannot be read them from this folder.

I was able to eliminate the read only error. When I viewed the directory
permissions of the CSC folder I noticed that although the administrators
group was in the list, there were no inherited or assigned permissions to the
group. Just for grins and since I had not received any response to my post,
I figured what do I have to loose. I assigned full control to the local
admin group on the CSC folder, resynchronized the files, took the PC off line
and low and behold, the files could be read and written to. Go figure.

As far as your VPN issue. I have noticed when a VPN is established from WAN
to LAN, a network share that would normally be accessed as
\\(netBIOS)servername\sharename must now be accessed
\\servername.domainname.local(or whatever your net admin has
configured)\sharename. To avoid this you can modify your local host file to
point to the sever IP. To test, when connected to the VPN attempt to ping
just the server name, then just type the UNC name in the RUN command and see
if the network share appears. I think this should resolve your VPN issue.
It may also help to allow "file and print sharing" on the firewalled
connecting of your laptop.

Good Luck

 

[Eric McWhorter]

Perhaps try establishing the VPN connection PRIOR to logging into your
machine. With the Cisco VPN client, one can enable a setting "Enable start
before logon":

Options >> Windows Logon Properties

check the box next to "Enable start before logon"

Then, reboot your computer, and once you press ctrl-alt-del to log on, you
will be presented with a smaller version of the Cisco VPN client. Choose
the appropriate connection, connect, and THEN log onto your machine in the
usual way. This will allow your computer to be on the LAN at the time of
logon, enabling all of the nice things like logon scripts, DNS registration,
etc., to happen as they normally would if you were physically on the office
LAN.

I can't speak specifically to your offline folder issues, but I have a
feeling that this might alleviate it by circumventing the situation
altogether.

- Eric McWhorter